Thursday, 30 June 2016

Women harvest rice in
Nepal. An estimated two billion people are already deficient in dietary zinc
and iron, an aspect of malnutrition that has been termed “hidden hunger”. Some
researchers think that shifts in nutritional content in major crops as a
consequence of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide could lead to more people
being at risk of mineral deficiencies.

Photo courtesy of the International Rice
Research Institute on Flickr under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.

As CO2 levels rise, so do
carbohydrates in plants, increasing food’s sugar content. While
carbon-enriched plants grow bigger, scientists are finding that they
contain proportionately less protein and nutrients such as zinc, magnesium
and calcium.

A meta-analysis of 7,761
observations of 130 plant species found that overall mineral
concentrations in plants declined by about 8 percent in response to
elevated CO2 levels — 25 minerals decreased, including iron, zinc,
potassium and magnesium.

New research found that as
atmospheric CO2 rose from preindustrial to near current levels, the
protein content in goldenrod pollen fell by 30 percent. Bees and other
pollinators rely heavily on goldenrod as protein-rich food for
overwintering. The loss of pollinators could devastate many of the world’s
food crops.

Research into the correlation
between CO2 concentrations and the nutrient content of food is in its
early stages. More study is urgently needed to determine how crops and
ecosystems will be altered as fossil fuels are burned, plus mitigation
strategies.

Among the myriad
impacts climate change is having on the world, one in particular may come as a
surprise: heightened atmospheric CO2 levels might be adversely
affecting the nutritional quality of the food you eat. As carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere continues to increase, you could end up eating more sugar and less
of important minerals such as zinc, magnesium and calcium — without even
realizing it. Those effects could also be reverberating up the food chain and
altering ecosystems in as yet poorly understood ways.

For plants,
a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide actually boosts productivity by
stimulating photosynthesis. They make more carbohydrate and grow larger —
seemingly a good thing. But because other nutrients don’t increase and can’t
keep pace with the augmented carbohydrate, this potential boon to our food
supply isn’t all that it seems: plants end up having a higher carbohydrate to
protein ratio, and relatively lower concentrations of minerals.

Put simply:
atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a sort of fertilizer to grow bigger, leafier
plants, but those larger broccolis and lettuces actually contain less
nutritional value per portion than their predecessors grown in the
preindustrial, pre-fossil fuel world.

And that could
be a problem for the world’s already malnourished people, for bees seeking
protein-rich pollen so they can safely overwinter, and for ecosystems that
could be thrown out of balance by changes in plant nutrition.

The human
implications of these ongoing changes to our food supply came under the
spotlight in April when the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)
published a major report on
the impact of climate change on human health. One of its key findings was that
rising carbon dioxide will reduce the nutritional quality of food.Allison
Crimmins, of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and a lead author of the
food safety chapter in the USGCRP report, told Mongabay about some of the ways
in which this is likely to be felt around the world: “In certain developing
countries, reduced nutritional value of foods will aggravate existing protein
deficiencies, particularly in children. In the US and other developed countries
however, dietary protein deficiencies are uncommon. In those cases, an
increased ratio of carbohydrates and fewer essential minerals — essentially
more starchy and more sugary foods — could potentially contribute to or
exacerbate existing chronic dietary deficiencies or obesity risks, though how
big a role this impact would play on a person’s overall nutrition remains
uncertain.”

Deciphering
the CO2 / plant nutrition relationship

In a 2014
study that informed the USGCRP report, researcher Irakli Loladze, of the Bryan
College of Health Sciences, described the projected increase in dietary starch
and carbohydrate as comparable to adding a “spoonful of sugars” to each 100
grams (3.5 ounces) of dry plant matter. When we’re being told not to eat more
than a few teaspoons-worth of sugar per day, this sounds like a lot.

What will be
the consequences, Loladze asks, if this additional sugar intake is unavoidable
and lifelong? How, for example, might that extra daily suger exacerbate the
health problems of the 25 million Americans, 98.4 million Chinese, and 65
million Indians who are part of the growing global diabetes
epidemic? And how might those health impacts escalate as atmospheric carbon
levels rise annually through the 21st century?

Loladze’s
meta-study — which examined thousands of observations of plants grown under
high carbon dioxide conditions — was an attempt to prove a theoretical
prediction he made back in 2002. We’ve known for decades that plants grown
under high carbon dioxide conditions have reduced protein concentrations, and
the mechanism behind that change is fairly well understood: more carbohydrate
dilutes the protein within the leaf. In addition, increased CO2
changes the rate of transpiration — the uptake of water through the roots and
evaporation through the leaves — and affects the amount of nutrients plants
draw from the soil. However, higher rates of photosynthesis have different
effects on different minerals.

Wheat. Carbon dioxide
promotes plant growth by boosting photosynthesis and carbohydrate production in
the plant. But other nutrients don’t keep pace with this increase, resulting in
higher carbohydrate to protein ratios, and lower concentrations of minerals.
These shifts in nutritional quality could have implications for human health
around the world. Photo courtesy of Žarko Šušnjar on Flickr, under a CC BY-SA
2.0 license

A theory
known as ecological stoichiometry — which examines the balance of chemical
elements in living systems — led Loladze to reason that minerals should also be
affected by a proportional increase in carbohydrate synthesis and the associated
knock-on effects this has on plant metabolism. But although a few studies
supported his hypothesis in the early 2000s, the evidence was limited.

“There was
considerable opposition to my idea,” Loladze told Mongabay. “The stoichiometric
theory [upon which I based my argument] was not well known back then. Being a
mathematician, I was viewed by some plant experts as an outsider with
simplistic arguments that would not pan out in the real world.”

No one would
fund the large-scale research effort Loladze needed to investigate his
prediction further. Lacking backing and unemployed, he remained determined to
test his theory with data. “With no money and no academic affiliation, the only
way to get data was to compile [findings] from the existing literature,” he
said.

Meanwhile,
scientists around the world were increasingly studying the CO2
nutrient effects that interested Loladze, but their results were perplexing:
while increases in atmospheric carbon decreased plant mineral concentrations in
some studies, minerals increased in others, or showed no significant change

Loladze
combined the data from numerous studies — that together had highly variable
results — into one large meta-analysis, and he found a clear signal in the
noise. A decade after he began work, he proved his prediction to be correct:
when he collated the results of 7,761 observations of 130 plant species, he
found that overall mineral concentrations in plant tissues declined by around 8
percent in response to elevated carbon dioxide levels. In all, 25 minerals were
found to decrease, including iron, zinc, potassium and magnesium.

Tussock moth
caterpillars feeding on leaves. Plants and the insects that feed on them form
the basis of most terrestrial ecosystems, so nutritional shifts caused by
rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will likely have impacts that extend
up the food chain, but as ecosystems are so complex, it’s difficult to predict
exactly how those changes will play out over time. Photo courtesy of Bjorn
Watland on Flickr under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

“One
important aspect of Loladze’s study is its emphasis on trace elements, like
zinc,” James Elser, of Arizona State University, and a proponent of the
ecological stoichiometry theory on which Loladze based his work, told
Mongabay. “These are often neglected in considerations
of plant nutrition but agronomists and others are increasingly aware
of the importance of these trace elements [not only] in limiting crop
production, but also in human health and are now provisioning them in
fertilizers.”

At the same
time Loladze was looking at all available data on the nutrient responses of
plants, Samuel Myers of Harvard University was also trying to pinpoint the
impact of carbon dioxide on plant mineral content.

Whereas
Loladze included data on wild as well as food crop species, and non-edible
tissues as well as edible, Myers focused specifically on zinc and iron in six
food crops. His research team grew the crops under different atmospheric CO2
conditions, and found a similar pattern: both zinc and iron declined by about
5-10 percent in wheat, rice, soybeans, and field peas when grown in a high
carbon dioxide setting.

On
the trail of trace elements and “hidden hunger”

Although a
more consistent picture is now emerging of what happens to plant nutrients as carbon
dioxide levels rise, it’s still not clear exactly how serious a problem this
will be for people’s health.

Minor
changes in mineral concentrations are unlikely to affect people already
consuming more than sufficient quantities for good health, like many in the
industrialized world. And if edible plants grow larger under higher carbon
dioxide, then simply eating more may compensate for the reduced mineral
concentration, though this could have consequences in terms of extra calories
consumed.

Goldenrod
in Virginia, USA. This is an essential late season source of food for bees, but
a recent study found that with rising carbon dioxide levels, the nutritional
quality of its pollen is decreasing. This could affect bee survival over the
winter. Pollinators such as bees play a crucial part in our food supply. Photo
courtesy of Bridget Leyendecker on Flickr under a CC BY 2.0 license.

This picture
changes markedly in the developing world. Deficiencies in micronutrients are
globally common there, with an estimated 2 billion people lacking in dietary
zinc and iron — a serious problem long recognized by
the United Nations. As the USGCRP report stated, “Globally, chronic dietary
deficiencies of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, iodine, and zinc
contribute to “hidden hunger,” in which the consequences of the micronutrient
insufficiency may not be immediate­ly visible or easily observed. This type of
micro­nutrient deficiency constitutes one of the world’s leading health risk
factors and adversely affects metabolism, the immune system, cognitive devel­opment
and maturation — particularly in children.” The report also noted that around
40 percent of people in the US are likely consuming less than the average daily
requirement of calcium and magnesium.

Given the
current prevalence of “hidden hunger” some experts expect that rising CO2
levels and corresponding declines in plant nutrition could have a major impact
on the health of those already suffering from, or at risk of, malnutrition —
with developing nations in Africa and Asia likely to be the hardest hit.

But more
research is needed to quantify potential impacts. Studies such as those done by
Loladze and Myers have so far only looked at the plants themselves, and not the
food products that arise from them, cautions Elser. This “doesn’t necessarily
represent the nutritional contents of the foods at the point of consumption,
once they have been processed and prepared. So, the ultimate nutritional
impact of the CO2 effect requires more investigation.”

“I agree
that the conclusions in both [studies] are somewhat alarming, but they should
be taken for what they are — just a couple of papers making estimations of
potential impact that need to be verified by agroecology, climate, types
of foods, etc,” Patrick Webb, Professor of Nutrition at Tufts University, told
Mongabay. “And remember that over the [20th century]
time-frames the [studies] refer to, there is a rapid expansion of bio-fortified
cropping (non-GMO) and a surge in processed food consumption globally, much of
which is micrononutrient fortified. I only say this to point out that these
papers don’t lead to a conclusion that ‘we’re going to run out of nutrients!’
Simply, that we need to be wary of these kinds of potentially negative impacts
of GHGs [greenhouse gases] even on our food supply, and such impacts are bound
to be greater in some places than others.”

Native
bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies and other wild pollinators are vital to
the world’s agriculture and to ecosystems. No one knows for certain how rising
carbon dioxide levels and corresponding falling protein and mineral levels in
plants will impact these species long term. Image by Edward Sanders courtesy of
the Biodiversity Heritage Library

“[T]he
issues are being discussed among international agriculture researchers, certainly,”
continued Webb, who is also Director for USAID’s Feed the Future Nutrition
Innovation Lab. “The challenge… is to document the pace of change [in plant
nutritional value] for different regions of the world, for different kinds of
crops. Only then will we know what kinds of policy changes need to be
[put] in place to respond to what is happening (or not happening) at a scale
significant enough to warrant action.”

Last year
Myers and his colleagues looked at what projected declines in crop zinc content
could mean for people in 188 countries. They found that under predicted
increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, 138 million more people would be at
risk of zinc deficiency by 2050, largely concentrated in Africa and South Asia.

“The effect
we have identified highlights an issue of social justice,” Myers and his
co-authors wrote. “The wealthy world’s CO2 emissions are putting the
poor in harm’s way.”

While the
problem can theoretically be solved by identifying the regions and populations
most at risk from hidden hunger, and then focusing mitigations such as mineral
fortification programs there, logistical hurdles will likely prevent fortified
foods from reaching everyone who need them, now and into the future, Loladze
points out in his 2014 paper. Another option is to explore crop cultivars for
selective breeding that may be less susceptible to nutrient declines under
higher carbon dioxide levels.

Loladze also
urges more research, asserting that a greater understanding of exactly how
nutrient declines occur could be an important step in responding to their
effects. “Elucidating the relative role of each mechanism — dilution [of
nutrients] by carbohydrates, reduced transpiration, altered demands for
nutrients and so on — and linking them to genomic changes will help us to
develop mitigation strategies.”

Food
chain and ecosystem changes

While the
full impact on human health of hidden hunger is still being investigated, we’re not the only
ones likely to be affected: as plants form the basis of most terrestrial ecosystems
“changes in plant based nutrition will extend up to all feeding
organisms as part of the food chain,” Lewis Ziska of the US Department of
Agriculture told Mongabay.

“Generally
this means that the vegetation [in a CO2 enriched environment] is of
poorer quality for the animals consuming it — insect herbivores, deer, etc,”
Elser explained. “However, this is not necessarily always the case. For
example, lower nitrogen content in grass [a consequence of the carbohydrate
dilution effect] has been shown to favor the success of locusts.”

A
worker bee in a honeycomb. The serious decline of protein in goldenrod, an
important fall crop that sustains North American bees through the winter, could
be harming these pollinators, but more study is needed to separate out this
particular dietary stressor from other major stressors including chemical
pesticide use. How CO2 levels are impacting other pollen-providing plants and
pollinators around the world has not been studied. Photo by Richard Bartz,
Munich Makro Freak & Beemaster Hubert Seibring licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Studies have
shown that some insect herbivores can compensate for the less nutrient rich
plants found in high CO2 environments by eating more, but their
growth, development, and reproduction can be affected, Loladze said. Crop
damage may also be higher if insects need to consume greater plant quantities
to survive. Some laboratory studies have shown that even with compensatory
feeding to make up for deficiencies, insects are more likely to starve to
death, or could end up consuming damaging quantities of toxic compounds. In the
wild, generalist species may respond by switching plant hosts, and over time
evolutionary responses could be expected too.

Another
ecosystem outcome is the lower nutrient content found in dead leaves, Elser
added. “This can slow down the cycling of nutrients in soil and thus
impact subsequent productivity of the grassland or forest.”

Research just
published by Ziska and his colleagues illustrates another important way CO2
induced nutritional changes are likely impacting wild ecosystems and human food
crops. His team examined Smithsonian National Museum specimens of the flowering
plant goldenrod collected between 1824 and 2014, to see how pollen quality
changed as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose — they saw a high
correlation. As carbon dioxide concentrations rose from preindustrial levels of
280 parts per million to near current levels of 398 parts per million, the
protein content in the most recent pollen samples fell by 30 percent. The
greatest protein drop was seen between 1960 and 2014, when atmospheric CO2
levels rose most dramatically.

US Department of
Agriculture Agricultural Research Service entomologist Dr. Jeff Pettis examines
a bee colony in McFarland, CA in 2014. Bees are one of nature’s many
pollinators and are crucial to the production for fruits and vegetables
—including apples, squash and almonds. Honeybees are responsible for
pollinating approximately $15 billion worth of US crops annually. Their
disappearance would have massive repercussions for our food supply. Photo by
David Kosling / USDA.

The team
also ran a two-year experiment that grew goldenrod under an equivalent range of
carbon dioxide concentrations, as well as at levels that are predicted for the
coming decades. They observed similar protein declines.

Myers
described these findings as “really fascinating,” and explained their
significance: “This is important because goldenrod is one of the most
ubiquitous late-blooming plants that provides fodder for bees before
they overwinter.” Ziska and colleagues say that goldenrod is recognized as
being “essential to native bee and honey bee health and winter survival”.

Not only is
this likely to directly impact bee populations, “It is reasonable in the case
of pollinators to suggest that reduced nutrition will increase vulnerability to
other stressors; these other stressors could include things like neonics
[pesticides] and/or invasives such as Varroa destructor [parasitic mites],”
Ziska said. The loss of pollinators worldwide would drastically impact the many
insect pollinated foods we enjoy today ranging from apples to oranges, almonds
to cashews, cabbages to broccoli, coffee to tomatoes and blueberries.

“We are
starting to design some experiments to see what these changes in protein
content might mean for bee behavior and their effectiveness as pollinators,”
Myers said. Research Myers and colleagues published last year quantified the
role that pollinators play in ensuring human health via food nutrition. Their
study concluded that without pollinators as many as 1.4 million additional
people would die each year due to non-communicable diseases and micronutrient
deficiencies.

The
urgent need for research

The
complexity of natural systems, and the numerous confounding factors that affect human
health and animal health, make it difficult to foresee exactly how CO2
impacts on the food chain will play out for people or ecosystems. Mitigation
strategies may be successful to a degree, once we know what we’re up against.
Even better would be to rapidly cut fossil fuel emissions, making sure that
long-term carbon dioxide increase predictions don’t materialize.

“The impact
on the nutrition of our food is a direct effect of rising greenhouse gas
emissions, so it is vital that we reduce these emissions,” Crimmins said.
“Taking action on climate change now and reducing the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions is not just an environmental imperative; it is crucial for protecting
public health.”

“Bottom line
is that humanity is operating like a monkey in a rocket ship,” Myers
concluded. “We used to be passengers with all the other living creatures
on the planet but we have climbed up into the cockpit and taken
control. Now we are pushing buttons and flipping levers and rapidly
changing most of the biophysical conditions on the planet with really very
little idea what the consequences will be for our own health and wellbeing or that
of the rest of the biosphere. Undoubtedly, there will be many more
surprises along the way.”

A
dwarf honey bee (Apis florea). The impacts of carbon dioxide levels on plant
nutrition has barely begun to be studied. As CO2 levels rise we are moving into
uncharted territory. Photo by Gideon Pisanty (Gidip) licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

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Wednesday, 29 June 2016

A team of
astronomers from Armagh Observatory and the
University of Buckingham report that
the discovery of hundreds of giant comets in the outer planetary system over the last
two decades means that these objects pose a much greater hazard to life than asteroids.

The team,
made up of Professors Bill Napier and Duncan Steel of the University of
Buckingham, Professor Mark Bailey of Armagh Observatory, and Dr David Asher,
also at Armagh, publish their review of recent research in the December issue of
Astronomy & Geophysics
(A&G), the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Because they are so distant from the Earth, Centaurs
appear as pinpricks of light in even the largest telescopes. Saturn's 200-km
moon Phoebe, depicted in this image, seems likely to be a Centaur that was
captured by that planet's gravity at some time in the past. Until spacecraft
are sent to visit other Centaurs, our best idea of what they look like comes
from images like this one, obtained by the Cassini space probe orbiting Saturn.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, having flown past Pluto six months ago, has
been targeted to conduct an approach to a 45-km wide trans-Neptunian object at
the end of 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Click for a
full size image

The giant comets, termed centaurs,
move on unstable orbits crossing the paths of the massive outer planets
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The planetary gravitational fields can
occasionally deflect these objects in towards the Earth.

Centaurs are
typically 50 to 100 kilometres across, or larger, and a single such body
contains more mass than the entire population of Earth-crossing asteroids found
to date. Calculations of the rate at which centaurs enter the inner solar
system indicate that one will be deflected onto a path crossing the Earth’s
orbit about once every 40,000 to 100,000 years. Whilst in near-Earth space they
are expected to disintegrate into dust and larger fragments, flooding the inner
solar system with cometary debris and making impacts on our planet inevitable.

Known severe
upsets of the terrestrial environment and interruptions in the progress of
ancient civilisations, together with our growing knowledge of interplanetary
matter in near-Earth space, indicate the arrival of a centaur around 30,000
years ago. This giant comet would have strewn the inner planetary system with
debris ranging in size from dust all the way up to lumps several kilometres
across.

Specific
episodes of environmental upheaval around 10,800 BCE and 2,300 BCE, identified
by geologists and palaeontologists, are also consistent with this new understanding
of cometary populations. Some of the greatest mass extinctions in the distant
past, for example the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, may
similarly be associated with this giant comet hypothesis.

Professor
Napier comments: "In the last three decades we have invested a lot of
effort in tracking and analysing the risk of a collision between the Earth and
an asteroid. Our work suggests we need to look beyond our immediate
neighbourhood too, and look out beyond the orbit of Jupiter to find centaurs.
If we are right, then these distant comets could be a serious hazard, and it’s
time to understand them better."

The
researchers have also uncovered evidence from disparate fields of science in
support of their model. For example, the ages of the sub-millimetre craters
identified in lunar rocks returned in the Apollo program
are almost all younger than 30,000 years, indicating a vast enhancement in the
amount of dust in the inner Solar system since then.

The outer solar
system as we now recognise it. At the centre of the map is the Sun, and close
to it the tiny orbits of the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and
Mars). Moving outwards and shown in bright blue are the near-circular paths of
the giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The orbit of Pluto is
shown in white. Staying perpetually beyond Neptune are the trans-Neptunian
objects (TNOs), in yellow: seventeen TNO orbits are shown here, with the total
discovered population at present being over 1,500. Shown in red are the orbits
of 22 Centaurs (out of about 400 known objects), and these are essentially
giant comets (most are 50-100 km in size, but some are several hundred km in
diameter). Because the Centaurs cross the paths of the major planets, their
orbits are unstable: some will eventually be ejected from the solar system, but
others will be thrown onto trajectories bringing them inwards, therefore posing
a danger to civilisation and life on Earth. Credit: Duncan Steel.

Falling
meteor may have changed the course of Christianity

The
early evangelist Paul became a Christian because of a dazzling light on the
road to Damascus, but one astronomer thinks it was an exploding meteor

ByJacob Aron

NEARLY two
thousand years ago, a man named Saul had an experience that changed his life, and possibly yours
as well. According to Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the biblical New
Testament, Saul was on the road to Damascus, Syria, when he saw a bright light
in the sky, was blinded and heard the voice of Jesus. Changing his name to
Paul, he became a major figure in the spread of Christianity.

William
Hartmann, co-founder of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, has
a different explanation for what happened to Paul. He says the biblical
descriptions of Paul’s experience closely match accounts of the fireball
meteor seen above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.

Hartmann has
detailed his argument in the journal Meteoritics
& Planetary Science (doi.org/3vn).
He analyses three accounts of Paul’s journey, thought to have taken place
around AD 35. The first is a third-person description of the event, thought to
be the work of one of Jesus’s disciples, Luke. The other two quote what Paul is
said to have subsequently told others.

“Everything
they are describing in those three accounts in the book of Acts are exactly the
sequence you see with a fireball,” Hartmann says. “If that first-century
document had been anything other than part of the Bible, that would have been a
straightforward story.”

But the
Bible is not just any ancient text. Paul’s Damascene conversion and subsequent
missionary journeys around the Mediterranean helped build Christianity into the
religion it is today. If his conversion was indeed as Hartmann explains it,
then a random space rock has played a major role in determining the course of
history (see “Christianity
minus Paul“).

“If
a large asteroid impact helped kill the dinosaurs, why couldn’t one influence
the evolution of beliefs?”

“It’s well
recorded that extraterrestrial impacts have helped to shape the evolution of
life on this planet,” says Bill
Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama.
“If it was a Chelyabinsk fireball that was responsible for Paul’s conversion,
then obviously that had a great impact on the growth of Christianity.”

Hartmann’s
argument is possible now because of the quality of observations of the
Chelyabinsk incident. The 2013 meteor is the most well-documented example of
larger impacts that occur perhaps only once in 100 years. Before 2013, the 1908
blast in Tunguska, also in Russia, was the best example, but it left just a
scattering of seismic data, millions of flattened trees and some eyewitness
accounts. With Chelyabinsk, there is a clear scientific argument to be made,
says Hartmann. “We have observational data that match what we see in this
first-century account.”

The most
obvious similarity is the bright light in the sky, “brighter than the sun,
shining round me”, according to Paul. That’s in line with video
from Chelyabinsk showing a light, estimated to be around three times as
bright as the sun, that created quickly moving shadows as it streaked across
the sky.

After
witnessing the light, Paul and his companions fell to the ground. Hartmann says
they may have been knocked over when the meteor exploded in the sky and
generated a shock wave. At Chelyabinsk, the shock wave destroyed thousands of
windows and knocked people off their feet.

Paul then
heard the voice of Jesus asking why Paul, an anti-Christian zealot to begin
with, was persecuting him. The three biblical accounts differ over whether his
companions also heard this voice, or a meaningless noise. Chelyabinsk produced
a thunderous, explosive sound.

Paul was
also blinded, with one account blaming the brightness of the light. A few days
later, “something like scales fell from his eye and he regained his sight”. Our
common idiom for suddenly understanding something stems from this description,
but Hartmann says the phrase can be read literally. He suggests that Paul was
suffering from photokeratitis, a temporary blindness caused by intense
ultraviolet radiation.

“It’s
basically a bit of sunburn on the cornea of the eye. Once that begins to heal,
it flakes off,” says Hartmann. “This can be a perfectly literal statement for
someone in the first century who doesn’t really understand what’s happening.”
The UV radiation at Chelyabinsk was strong enough to cause sunburn,
skin peeling and temporary blindness.

Raj
Das-Bhaumik of Moorfields Eye Hospital in London says the condition is
common among welders whose eyes are exposed to bright sparks, but the symptoms
aren’t exactly as Hartmann is suggesting. “You wouldn’t expect bits of the eye
to fall off; I’ve not come across that at all,” he says. It’s possible that the
thin skin of the eyelids could burn and peel off, he says, but that is unlikely
to happen in isolation. “If this were a meteorite, I’m sure you’d have other
damage as well.”

Mark Bailey of Armagh
Observatory in the UK, who previously identified a Tunguska-like event in
Brazil in the 1930s, says it’s worth analysing old texts for clues to
ancient impacts – bearing in mind that accounts are shaped by what people knew
at the time. “Sometimes that doesn’t make sense to us, but it does make sense
if you can reinterpret it.” What does he think of Hartmann’s argument? “He does
a very detailed analysis,” says Bailey.

“I would
label it as informed speculation – Bill Hartmann is an excellent author,” says
Cooke. “But like so many other things in the ancient past there is no real
concrete evidence, no smoking gun.” And with no other accounts from the time to
draw on, there is little additional evidence to confirm or disprove the idea.

A search for
meteorites in and around Syria could prove fruitful – Chelyabinsk left small
chunks all over the region – but even that would be inconclusive. “If a
meteorite is discovered in modern Syria in the future, the first thing to test
would be how long it’s been on the Earth and whether it could potentially be
associated with such a recent fall,” says Bailey. But even with our best
techniques, dating such a rock to the nearest hundred years would be difficult.

Even so,
Hartmann believes we need to think seriously about the implications of his
idea. “My goal is not to discredit anything that anybody wants to believe in,”
he says. “But if the spread of a major religion was motivated by misunderstanding
a fireball, that’s something we human beings ought to understand about
ourselves.”

Christianity
minus Paul

IF A falling
meteor did inspire Paul’s conversion to Christianity (see main story),
that makes a random event hugely important in the history of humanity. What if
Paul hadn’t seen the fireball?

“Some
scholars call Paul the second founder of Christianity,” says Justin Meggitt, a religious historian
at the University of Cambridge. At the time, Christianity was a small offshoot
of Judaism, but Paul helped preach a version of it that broke with Jewish law.

Paul wasn’t
the only first-century missionary, and without him Christianity would probably
still have separated from Judaism and spread around the world, says Meggitt.
But Paul’s teachings have endured through the ages, and their absence would be
felt.

“People’s
interpretation of Paul is absolutely fundamental to some of the central figures
of Christianity,” says Meggitt. For example, Martin Luther, who started the
Protestant Reformation in 1517, was heavily inspired by Paul’s letters.

Specific
predictions about how Christianity and world events would have unfolded without
Paul’s influence are hard to make, says Meggitt, but “Christianity probably
would be very different without him”.

This
article appeared in print under the headline “Christianity’s meteoric rise”

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